How much is a Canadian flag worth?

The first time I saw Andy, he was being pelted by stones by the neighbourhood kids in Belgium. He looked quite dishevelled and forlorn at the time, to say the least. We swooped down to prevent any further attack. Seeing that we had formed a buffer zone, the children lost all interest and drifted away.

"Thanks," Andy said. "You saved me."
"I wouldn't go that far," I said. "They were small stones."
"Well, you saved me from the indignity of it all. I mean, what did I ever do to them?"
"You're American," Hannah said.
Andy took a minute to digest this fact, wondering how anyone could ever dislike an American.
"So how is it that they didn't stone you?" he asked.
"We're Canadians," Hannah explained. "Here," she said, reaching down into her backpack. "I have a Canadian flag I can sell you. Put it on your backpack. It will make all the difference. You won't see anyone being stoned with a Canadian flag on their backpack. Most Americans have one now."
"But you don't have a Canadian flag on your backpacks," Andy remarked.
"We don't need one. We're Canadians."
Andy struggled to make sense of the logic. But he took the flag from Hannah.
"How do I attach it to my backpack?" he asked.
Hannah pulled out a small sewing kit from her backpack.
"I'll sew it on," she said. It will cost you a little more, but it's worth it."

I had met Hannah when hitchhiking through Switzerland. A fellow Canadian, she had been on the road much longer than me and had picked up many tricks of the trade. When you are travelling through Europe on a very tight budget, you have to be ingenious.

So Hannah sold Andy a Canadian flag and her sewing skills. I couldn't help but feel that this was highway robbery. But Hannah defended her actions.
"I am doing him a favour. See how happy Andy looks now."
And he did look happy. The first time I really saw him smile. Grateful for the intervention of two passing Canadians who welcomed him into their protective entourage.

The irony was that when it was time to separate, it was I who left the entourage. Hannah and Andy wanted to cross the Channel and explore England. I had already had enough of Britain in Canadian History classes, which were really all about Britain. This was still before Canadians had developed any real lasting cultural identity. And before Margaret Atwood and my discovery of Guinness.

It was also shortly after I discovered that Hannah and Andy were sleeping together. Did I feel some sort of betrayal: Hannah crossing over to the other side of the border? Not really. Hannah was an attractive girl. But I don't think I ever thought of her in that way. At least, not until I realized that they were tight together (the amazing things you could do in one sleeping bag). And I doubt if she felt that way about me, either. Hannah and I had one thing in common: we had no desire to explore the obvious. My being clueless about women didn't help either. Still am. But we will leave that for another blog.

So Hannah and Andy boarded the ferry at Oostende for England, and I bade them farewell, after sharing a warm hug with Hannah and a strong  handshake with Andy.
"You take care of each other, eh?" I said, then watched as they walked over the ramp onto the ferry. 
I never did make it over to England to see how an innovative Canadian might have found ways to exploit the British and whether the Brits were any more tolerant of a Yank in their midst. It was only about twenty-three years later that I finally made my way over to England, taking my son on a whirlwind tour of England, Wales and Scotland for his Bar Mitzva. We didn't hitchhike, so I don't know if Americans kept touting the Canadian flag on their backpacks.

#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

* Perhaps I shouldn't call them Americans, as Americans occupy a much larger area than the United States. But, as a Canadian, this is how we knew them then, and as a rather indescript exile, this is how I still know them now.

** At the time, my Torontonian accent was also apparently a dead giveaway of my being Canadian, although I am told I lost it long ago. Canadians don't think they have an accent, but I have come to recognize the clear Canadian rural twang over Israeli television when a Canadian series comes on. 

*** There were a few times when I was mistaken for an American. "Where are you from in the States?" a shopkeeper asks me. "I am from Canada," I dryly reply. "Sorry," he says, fearing that I have been insulted.

**** Israelis don't think that there is any difference between Americans and Canadians, or at least no difference worth getting worked up about. We will ignore them, for now.

Wannabe

"So, you want to be a writer?"
"Well, yes."
She marked down wannabe.
 "Actually, I already published a book through eBook Publishers," I assured her.
"eBook Publishers?"
"Yes, they just publish eBooks. But this time I want my new book to be published by a more traditional publisher, both in hardcover and eBook."
"Traditional publisher. You will need a literary agent for that," she said.
"Yes, I know."
She marked down delusional.
"New York, London?"
"What?" I asked.
"Your literary agent. Where you want to get published."
"Actually, I thought I'd start with Toronto."
"Toronto? Isn't the Canadian market quite small?" she asked.
"Yes, but I see it as going back to my roots. Coming home."
Sentimental loser, she wrote.
"And I also write a blog."
She looked up, not too pleased with this news. "I hope you are not putting me in your blog."
"No, of course not," I lied.
Actually, I hadn't planned to until I saw that sentimental loser remark. I have been called many things: cold, unemotional, detached, anti-social ... and oh, yes - loser, but never sentimental. That stung.
"What about friends?" she asked.
"What about them?"
"Are any of them writers?".
"I think so. But most won't admit it."
She nodded in empathy. Friendless, she added.
"Okay, that's good for a start," she said.
"When shall we continue?" I asked.
"I'll call you," she said, with a sweet smile.

A friend of mine, who is brave enough to call himself an aspiring writer, asked me over a pint of Guinness a short while ago. "Why do we do this to ourselves?"
"Do what?"
"Torture ourselves as writers. The process of writing is painful enough, in itself, but why put ourselves also through the pain of seeking someone to publish our writing?"
"I'd put it down to the masochistic creative gene. Why does anyone want to create?" I asked. "Painters, musicians ... is it any easier for them?"
"Some of them do quite well," he said. "Big houses in Beverley Hills."
"Is that what you are in it for? The money?"
"Wouldn't hurt. What are you in it for?" he asked.
"The groupies."

So, I have a new book coming out. Well ... I have a new book. The gods will tell whether it comes out or sinks into an abysmal bog. (I hope I didn't offend anyone with that gods remark. My shrink tells me I should stop doing that.) And talking about shrinks, here is another excerpt from my new book (in addition to my last blog posting). Some people may think the main character resembles me. I actually think that I resemble him. He came first.

“Would you consider yourself suicidal?”

The psychologist studied me from behind her thick framed eyeglasses.

“Suicidal? No,” I replied, shaking my head.

 “You have never had suicidal thoughts?”

“No, not really. Except for wanting to jump off a cliff.”

“What!”

“Jump off a cliff.”

“I heard you. In what way is that not suicidal?”

“I do not want to jump off a cliff,” I said slowly with emphasis. “That is why I am probably still alive. But whenever I approach the edge of a cliff with a sheer drop, I have a powerful urge to jump into the abyss.”

She sat there watching me, as if trying to decipher something in my manner.

“Are you depressed, when this happens?” she asked.

“Depressed about not jumping?”

“You know what I mean.”

“It doesn’t depend on the mood,” I answered. “Or the weather. When I come close to the edge, I want to jump off.”

“What happens then?”

“I move back.”

This was my first visit to the psychologist. Or was she a psychiatrist? I keep getting my terms mixed up. I know, I told you I would never go. So I lied. Or as a psychologist would say: I underestimated my sub-conscious. Actually, it was mostly because of Rachel’s endless nagging. In the end it was easier to go than not.

My psychologist was a woman. I had already viewed life from a male perspective, so I thought it was time to see things from a female point of view.

She was very officious looking, that first meeting. What I suppose you would expect of a psychologist. The room was full of books: books on every side. Somebody once told me that half of the books in a psychologist’s office were just empty boxes made to look like books. I hadn’t given much credit to such reports, although given the first opportunity, I would slip one out and take a good look.

“What do people think about your desire to jump off cliffs?” she asked, catching me drifting.

“Impulse.”

“What?”

“Impulse to jump off cliffs. There is really no desire there.”

“Okay,” she said, writing something in her notepad. “What do people think about your impulse to jump off cliffs?”

“They don’t know about it.”

“They don’t know about it? Not even your family and closest friends? What do they say when you are not willing to stand with them by the edge of the cliff?”

“They think I have a fear of heights.”

“And that is all?”

“That is all.”

“Now I can see why it took you so long to come to a psychologist,” she muttered.

“What?”

“No, scratch that. That was very unprofessional.”

Frozen wonderland without borders

"Do you have any ice salt?" I asked the woman at the Canadian Tire store.
"No, all out."
"When will you have more?"
"Don't know. Going to take some time. The truck is coming direct from Montreal, eh?"

When travelling for my annual Canadian winter visit, I never expected ice salt to become the most sought after commodity during the Christmas season. But people were searching all over Toronto for at least a bag or two.

"I hear you have ice salt," I said to the man in the long black coat hiding behind the Canadian Tire store.
"Shh, not so loud," he said. "Sure, I can sell you a few bags."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five dollars a bag."
"Twenty-five dollars! That's five times the list price!"
"You want it or not?"
"Sure, I'll take two bags."

I should have expected something when a rare snow blizzard hit Jerusalem, closing the city down completely for two days. It rarely snowed in Jerusalem, and when it did, it was nothing like this. Not only was the power knocked out in many places, but the roads were closed and cars stranded all over. The people of Jerusalem felt quite helpless. "Where is the government?" they asked. "Why didn't they prepare for this? You never hear about this happening in a civilized nation!"

Even when I landed in Canada a couple of days later during a blizzard, I still didn't expect anything extremely out of the ordinary.
"We Canadians aren't stopped by such things," I bragged to my Israeli wife and children in an email after completing the perilous drive from the Pearson International Airport to my mother's house in Scarborough. "We drive right through it."

And shovelling snow at five the next morning to battle jet lag didn't dampen my enthusiasm.
"Good to experience a real Canadian winter for once," I thought, remembering my visits of Christmases past when little snow was on the ground.

The weather reports did nothing to prepare us for what was to come, either.
"The end of the week may be a little tricky," the weatherman announced, "with a mixture of rain and snow."

Then the first ice storm hit. It, in itself, wasn't that irregular. We were used to having to avoid ice covered sidewalks at times, forced to find traction through snow laden lawns instead. But it was a small taste of what was to come.

"Another, quite bigger ice storm in on the way," we were told.
They still didn't use the term epic, although they would soon. Nor did they say that this was the mother of all ice storms, although this was hinted at in many different ways over the days to follow. Most of the weathermen had become increasingly gun shy after making too many wrong predictions over the previous weeks and didn't want to take the chance of being open to further ridicule.

I don't know what we really expected to happen, as most of us were about to experience something for the first time. What did happen is that we woke up to a winter wonderland: a wonderland of ice. Trees, cars, buildings... everything was covered by a thick layer of ice. Events were cancelled, people were told not to go outside. And the only ones who dared venture outside were mostly kids on skates, skating over frozen streets and lawns, setting up makeshift hockey rinks wherever they desired.

It was then that we began to take notice of an ominous cracking noise, which seemed to come from almost every direction. Soon trees began to fall under the weight of the ice, branches breaking off onto power lines, through the ceilings of houses, and crushing the tops of cars. Soon the estimates came in: over 300,000 households and establishments without power. Many people no longer concentrated on Christmas, but were concerned mostly with just how to survive the bitter cold until the power came back on. And it slowly became evident that this wouldn't be for days.

And as the days went by without power, food thrown out because there was no way to refrigerate it, and people having no way to heat their houses in the -15 degree weather (celcius) - people began to ask: "Where is the government? Why weren't they prepared for such a thing?"

In the end, they got everyone hooked up again to the power... until the next time. Some people had gone without power for more than seven days.

And for those of us who thought we could drive through anything, we had now acquired a much greater respect for the winter, and were in much greater awe of a Mother Nature who could so easily humble and bring us to our knees at a moment's notice. For, despite all of our technologies, it only took one really bad storm to send us temporarily back to the Stone Age. And it didn't matter whether you were in Canada, Israel or the Arctic Circle. Mother Nature has a very long reach.

So, the next time you have something to say about Mother Nature, you had better be nice, or be ready for the outcome.

Rob Ford - Making Canada proud?

You've got to give the guy credit. Not since the marital and post-marital antics of Margaret Trudeau has a Canadian managed to star in leading news broadcasts, late night show monologues, and of course - have someone play a caricature of him on Saturday Night Live. But no caricature of him can do the man justice. If you want to really witness the depths of chaotic comic absurdity that the man is capable of -  simply watch Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto, at a press conference.

I realized that Rob Ford had hit it big when an Israeli radio station led into the hourly news with a hot item about a crack smoking, inebriated Mayor, known for his racial slurs and demeaning remarks about women. And who was this mayor? Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto, a city in the United States of America!

Now, on a normal day, I would be on the phone bombarding the radio station for their gross error.
"Do you call yourselves news reporters? How can you put a major Canadian city in the United States, of all places? You do realize that Canada and the United States aren't the same country? Or were you out for lunch that day?!"
(Some of you out there, especially those of you married to Canadians, know how sensitive we Canadians can be.)

But no, I didn't say anything - not even to Adva who was in the car with me listening to the news. Some things you just don't want to take credit for.

"You know, there really is a Toronto in the States," Adva said, convinced that the news reporter had got it right, for everyone knows that Canadians aren't like that. "When we were in California (on a business trip) two people who were to join us couldn't land at LA airport because it was shut down because of the shooting there. They phoned us to tell us that they landed in Toronto, instead, and were renting a car and should be there later in the day. We thought - how are they going to get from Toronto to California by car in one day? But then we discovered there is a Toronto in California."

For Adva, believing that Rob Ford was the Mayor of a Toronto in the United States was the only way of having it make sense. I might have been tricked into this also had I not been following the Ford saga daily in the Canadian online media. And being Canadian, or at least still part Canadian, I had to own up and accept a part of the collective guilt.

"Yes, but in this case he really is the Mayor of Toronto. Toronto, Canada."
"Your Toronto!" Adva exclaimed, aghast.
"Yes."
"How did that happen?"
"Don't ask."

The thing is, over the years I have often told people that one big difference between Canadian politics and Israeli politics is the issue of accountability. The Canadian parliamentary system ensures that Canadian politicians must answer to the people who directly voted them in, while the Israeli system only requires Israeli politicians to answer to their party. One would expect, then, that a Canadian politician would be under much more scrutiny and public censure, and as such - be much more accountable for his/her actions.

But that was before a long line of police investigations into the actions of  Israeli politicians. Not only have mayors of Israeli cities been investigated and prosecuted, but so also have Israeli government ministers, an Israeli Prime Minister, and an Israeli President (who is presently serving jail time). Many people even think that the police have become overzealous in their investigations. It would be difficult, then, to still maintain that there is no accountability for Israeli politicians (although unfortunately stupidity is not a criminal offense, punishable by law).

And then along came Rob Ford, who not only appears to have crossed almost every red line possible, but is still in office. Not only is he accused of smoking crack, being constantly inebriated, committing racial slurs and  being involved in conflicts of interest, but some of his vices have even been captured on camera - such as smoking crack and urinating in public. In spite of all this, other than stripping away some of his powers (a decision which might not hold up in court), the system states that he can't be rid of, no matter how many people want to see him go.

But there might be another option. Perhaps Rob Ford could be shipped out to the Toronto in California. If an Israeli reporter got this wrong when sober, think how long it might take Rob Ford to realize that he is in the wrong Toronto when totally inebriated. And who knows, California Torontonians might even really like him.

So, how did Rob Ford get elected in the first place? That appears to be the story behind the story. It involves a Toronto much different from the Toronto where I grew up. People no longer speak proudly of the Toronto melting pot, where people from over 50 different countries and nationalities come together to create a rich multi-colored ethnic culture. Instead, people talk more and more about the divisions, the discrepancies, and the large social and economic gap. It appears that Rob Ford has tapped into the frustration of those who not only feel that their needs are not being met, but that the gap between the haves and the have nots is constantly widening. Ford has managed to convince people that he has their interests at heart, in spite of the fact that he comes from a wealthy family. Some political analysts even believe that Ford will be reelected in the next election, despite everything we are witnessing right now.

"Where is the accountability, then?" you might ask.
I think we will have to wait and see.

Travelling the Italian Way

What is loyalty, really? I know you can be loyal to a husband, a wife, a country, or a friend... but what about being loyal to an airline?

For five consecutive years I travelled from Tel Aviv to Toronto and back with Air Canada, faithfully collecting miles through their Aeroplan frequent flyer program.  After having flown with many different airlines in the past, I decided to make Air Canada “my airline” for a number of reasons - the leading reasons being that it was a direct flight and I felt I was supporting my “national” airline.

“National airline?” you say. “Isn’t that a little far-fetched? What about El Al? Surely they are more a national airline for you now. And they fly direct to Toronto, also.”

Well, yes. But I have one small, very significant problem with El Al. Put too many Israelis in a confined space and things just get nasty.

So one might call me a loyal Air Canada traveller. Well, at least until December 2012, that is,  when Air Canada and I parted ways and I travelled to Toronto and back with another airline. Did I feel guilty? A little. Did Air Canada really care? Probably not. And there lies the problem.

Over the years, I started to feel that I was being taken for granted by Air Canada. Instead of welcoming my business and adding in a few perks to reward me for my loyalty, Air Canada showed no real signs of wanting my business at all. Not once was I offered an upgrade, or a chance to exchange points for an upgrade. I never knew whether they would be offering special winter deals that year, and when they did offer, it was usually announced late in the year - in October or November. And I couldn’t wait that long before purchasing my December ticket. And when I flew to Scotland with another Star Alliance member airline earlier in the year, Air Canada wouldn’t honour the miles accumulated with that airline, providing some lame excuse. Except for the direct flight, and the feeling of “Oh Canada” as I entered the plane, I began to wonder whether there was really much of an advantage flying Air Canada. And then along came Alitalia.

Six years ago, at about the same time I joined the Air Canada frequent flyer program, I also  joined the Alitalia frequent flyer program on a whim. But when I discovered that Alitalia was experiencing financial difficulties, I decided that they were not an option at the time. However, over the years, Alitalia managed to get its act together through new financial arrangements and they began an aggressive marketing campaign. Which led one day to an offer that I found in my inbox - an offer I found quite difficult to refuse. 15% off any ticket to a destination of my choice. And not only 15% off the base fare, which Air Canada had once offered me (the base fare constituting only about a half of the total cost of the ticket before taxes and services are added on) - but 15% off the final price. The only catch was that I had to purchase a ticket between 10 p.m. that night and 5 a.m. the following morning. Usually I am not that spontaneous (ask my wife), but taking into account that Alitalia’s regular price for a round trip ticket to Toronto was already about a hundred dollars cheaper than Air Canada’s cheapest combination, and that all in all Alitalia’s price would be about three hundred dollars cheaper, I made the leap.

Now, you may say that I sold out my loyalty for $300, and in part, you may be right. But it was more than this. I felt sought after again. I felt that someone valued my business. I just hoped that there wasn’t another catch somewhere.

The only catch I could find was Rome airport where I had to catch my connecting flight. Even a Kupat Holim corridor has more seats than they have in a gate section at Rome airport. With little chance of finding a place to sit, you are left to wander the halls or sit down on the grubby floor. But it was only two hours between flights and I could excuse this small hindrance for the price offered. And when it came to flying Alitalia, I was pleasantly surprised. The flight from Tel Aviv to Rome was a bit cramped, like most flights within Europe, but the flight from Rome to Tel Aviv was spacious, with a personal screen on the back of each seat (although the movie selection was quite inferior to Air Canada’s selection).

So, I made it to Toronto. The only thing remaining was to see whether they would get me back to Tel Aviv in the new year.  And here was the icing on the cake.

You’d think that once they had “roped me in”, they would treat me with the same disregard as Air Canada. But here I was at Toronto Pearson International Airport, awaiting the return leg back to Israel, when I heard my name. “Will David Lloyd please come up to the desk for the Alitalia flight to Rome.” I walked up to the desk wondering whether they would tell me that I had only paid for half a ticket when a very pleasant woman attendant took my ticket and gave me a new one. “We are upgrading you to business class,” she said.

My first flight with Alitalia and I already got upgraded. Air Canada, suck on that! It is almost enough to get you to wave the Italian flag and learn to speak Italian. Would I fly with Alitalia again? Well, right now I see very good reason to travel the Italian way.

Arrivederci.

Ideally Speaking

Vivian Rakoff, in “Ideally Speaking” says: “Idealism in a way is a manifestation of a generalized human desire to have a sense-making model or paradigm of the world. There are those who just accept what is given to them implicitly without it being explicit and there are those who try to make it explicit and if they haven’t got a model, go looking for it. We seem to need a sense-making system that takes away the sense of frivolity in our existence because we have a real terror of meaninglessness.”

The major difference between myself, and the South African Jews interviewed in the book who decided to emigrate to Israel in the end, is that they came here for reasons of ideology. I came first and discovered the ideology afterwards.

In a way, I am somewhat envious of those who grew up in Jewish youth movements, with a clear sense of their own identity, engaging in intellectual discussions of burning issues. Jonathan Broomberg, in “Ideally Speaking”, says: “My sense is that each person who was in the movement in each generation has a different and quite unique relation to that ideology. At one end of the spectrum were people whose involvement was entirely a function of the group while at the other end you had people for whom it ran very deep personally.”

The reason for my lack of ideology, then, as a youth, might have been because there was no group for me to be a part of. I grew up in a rather sterile WASPish suburb of Toronto. My family didn’t have any marked ethnic distinction. And although I read extensively - devouring the theories of Freud, the teachings of different world religions, the background to revolution and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks... there was no one to intellectually share these ideas with. At a time when the hippies were beginning to assemble in the streets of downtown Toronto, preaching new world order from their makeshift community in Yorkville, my peers in Scarborough were only concerned with the trivial affairs of the day.

And by the time that I was old enough to join the hippie movement, it was already petering out. But two things stayed with me from all of their proclamations for social renewal and a better world: one was the idea of communal living and the other was the return to the land.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the Jewish youth there were also talking about creating a better world, although their approach was quite different from that of the “flower generation.  In most Jewish youth movements, the concept of Israel and the kibbutz were almost inseparable. Israel was seen to hold the promise of “a light unto the nations”, and most saw this to be best realized through the socialistic and utopian nature of the kibbutz life style.

By the time I heard about the kibbutz in my sheltered existence, the “real terror of meaninglessness” had already led me to  consider leaving Canada in the search of something more. I heard about the kibbutz for the first time from a friend of my sister’s, who was planning to go to a six month ulpan on a kibbutz where you learn Hebrew half the day and work the other half. Something seemed to click when she told me about this and I felt that this was something I had to do. The irony was that she never did go to Israel in the end, but rather went to work with the native Indian community somewhere in Alberta, trying to right the wrongs of discrimination in her own backyard. Which is somewhat similar to the decision of many South African Jews not to emigrate to Israel but stay in South Africa and fight against Apartheid.

So, somehow I and many South Africans ended up in the same place. I had never planned, though, to stay here. I came to see socialism in action, and also learn Hebrew on the side. The ideology only really came afterwards. There was a time when I believed I would spend the rest of my life on the kibbutz. But that is when reality set in, both for me and for many of the South Africans who had decided to settle on a kibbutz. We gradually discovered the discrepancies between vision and reality; between the idealization of human nature and human primal instinct. If “Ideally Speaking” is any indication, most of the South African Jews who came to live on a kibbutz have since left. Many have left Israel, also - some going back to South Africa and others settling in other countries around the globe. We came very close to leaving Israel when we left the kibbutz, also. But in the end, we stayed, settling for isolation in the desert. The main difference here between me and South Africans, was that I only felt overly disillusioned with the kibbutz, feeling that it didn’t live up to its ideals. Many South Africans had become disillusioned with the country as a whole, feeling that they had been misled during their years in the youth movements about what really to expect. But my advantage, perhaps, was that I had first landed in Israel without any expectations. No one had tried to plant a pretty picture in my mind about Israel. Rather, at the kibbutz desk, when applying to come to a kibbutz ulpan, they appeared more interested in dissuading me from going.

You might wonder why I have concentrated on comparing my own experience to that of South African Jews. Why I would want to make such a comparison at all. Or why I didn’t choose youth closer to home, such as North American Jewish youth.

This was inspired by a book I recently read and have quoted here: “Ideally Speaking”. Although the  book is based on a series of interviews with a wide cross-section of South African Jews - now living in South Africa, Israel and abroad - I feel that much of what is expressed in the book is relevant to all of us, and warmly recommend the book to all of you.  I first heard of the book from one of its two editors: Steve Hellman (Lindsay Talmud is the other editor). I had never met a South African before coming to Israel and Steve was one of the first South Africans that I did meet. Not only that, but Steve played a significant part in my life in the early eighties when I was just starting out as a new teacher. In his role as coordinator of the English department at Kibbutz Brenner Regional High School, where I began my teaching career, Steve both welcomed me to the world of teaching and served as my mentor. And I owe it to him for not only getting through those first few months as a new teacher, but for also instilling in me the inspiration for thinking outside of the box in my teaching and in creating authentic teaching environments. Thirty years have passed since then and only now have I really discovered the world that Steve came from. And I thank him for what he gave me then, and what he has shared with me now.

If airplanes were meant to fly

When our first child was three, we took him with us on a trip to Canada.
“We are going on an airplane!” we told him, much to his delight.
At that time, a bus took us from the old terminal building at Ben Gurion airport and drove us to the foot of the plane, where we climbed the steps up into the airplane.
After settling in and after a long strenuous 12 hours of keeping Edan amused during the flight, we finally landed in Toronto, heaving a sigh of relief as we walked through the “sleeve” from the plane into the terminal building.
Edan looked back at the airplane through the terminal window.
“When are we going up in an airplane?” he asked.
“We were just up in an airplane,” I answered, patiently. “That one,” I said pointing back to the airplane  through the window.
“No,” Edan said, pouting. “I want to go up in an airplane.”
Adva and I tried to dig deeply into our collective wisdom and convince Edan that we had been up in an airplane, but no matter what we said, he was not convinced, and it was clear that he would no longer trust anything that we said, not then, not ever.
For Edan, airplanes had nothing to do with being on the inside looking out.

There is a life lesson here. I just have to figure out what it is. And this year, 30 years later, I travelled the airwaves from Israel to Canada yet again. Or so it seemed. Now you never really see the plane on the outside. You walk into the plane through a sleeve at the new Ben Gurion terminal building and out of the plane through a sleeve at Pearson International. Yes, the plane does appear to take off, and there is constant turbulence through the next twelve hours, and then there is the bumpy landing. But were we flying? Really? Sometimes flying reminds me of that magic trick where the magician goes through one door on the stage and magically comes out through the door on the other side of the stage. Magic? Illusion?

All a matter of perspective, I suppose. I live in two parallel worlds: one in Israel, and the other in Canada. They both appear extremely far away from each other during the year. “Worlds apart”, one might say. Yet, all it takes is to walk through the door into a plane, count to 43,200, and walk back out. And “magic” - your body has been transported from one side of the world to the other, while your mind struggles to keep up.

I am waiting for “Beam me up Scotty” to become a reality. Many things which once seemed to be  science fiction have since become reality. Why not that also? The airline unions may have a problem with it, though. I can see the ensuing strikes as airlines move to body transportation machines. Of course, not everyone could be transported at once. There would still be lineups. Baggage might become an issue. Body weight might have to be factored in. They may still have to serve food and drinks while people wait in long lines. Maybe even play movies on widescreen tv or hand out handheld video players to entertain people while they wait. I’m sure that airlines, or whatever they may call themselves then, could tweak out a substantial profit.

And, as with anything, many people will look back with romantic nostalgia to the days of flight in an actual airplane, when this happens.

“When I was young, we travelled from continent to continent by flying in an actual airplane!”
“Gee dad, what was it like?”
“Well, if you looked down, you could see mountains. And they actually served us sitting down. No standing for hours awaiting your turn in the transportation booth. And the movies were better...”

Some people have a problem with change, of any type. They are used to something one way, and this makes that thing sacrosanct by default. For some people, the cinema came to an end when they moved from silent movies to talkies - and transportation lost its romantic appeal when we no longer rode the rough seas in a ship but flew high above completely detached from the earth below.